Political Satire: Having trouble surviving these times? You’re not alone. Join us in columnist John F. Di Leo’s exploration of an alternate universe, where we imagine the impossible:
Joe Buckstop, an aging, corrupt old fool, somehow becomes president in his basement, and every night, an aide has to bring him his soup and discuss the events of the day as he prepares to receive his nightly meds…
Dateline, April 13. Begin Transcript:
“If it’s Tuesday, this must be Belgium.”
“What’s that? Who’s there?”
“Oh, it’s just me sir; with your soup, sir. Remember? The pizza guy?”
“Oh, yes. Right. What was that about Belgium?”
“Oh, nothing, sir. I just mutter to myself, sir. Just saw an old movie on TV; I was remembering the title.”
“Oh.”
“I have your soup, sir.”
“Oh.”
“So here it is, sir, Afghan noodle soup.”
“Huh? Why?”
“Because that’s what she cooked, sir. If the cook had made something else, I’d be bringing that, sir. I have nothing to do with it.”
“But who eats Afghan food, man?”
“Well, Afghans, for one, sir.”
“Well, I shouldn’t have to.”
“So you’re just assuming it’s bad? Just because it’s Afghan, you automatically figure it’s got to be horrible, sir?”
“Well, but… it’s Afghan, man! Who ever heard of an American eating that stuff!”
“Well, sir, there are a lot of Afghan restaurants in America, sir… I doubt if they’d stay in business based entirely on the booming American tourist trade of visiting Afghans…”
“Never been to one.”
“I’m not surprised, sir.”
“Well, let’s see it. What’s it called again?”
“Afghan noodle soup, sir. Let’s see, what did she say? Lamb, noodles, chickpeas… and, umm… one other thing… kidney beans. That’s it.”
“Nothing else?”
“Well, that’s all she told me. Might be more. I didn’t make it.”
“Are there crackers?”
“Right here, sir. Lots of them.”
“Well, here goes…. Mmm… not bad. It’s, umm… well… it’s uhhh…”
“Normal, sir?”
“Yeah. It’s pretty normal.”
“Glad to hear it, sir.”
“Mmmm…. not bad at all.”
“Hey, umm… just out of curiosity, sir… before I go…”
“What’s that?”
“Well, sir… I heard something about Afghanistan in the news today, sir.”
“Oh?”
“About how you’re planning on the troop pullout, sir.”
“Oh?”
“They said President Trump had announced a plan to pull out all our troops from Afghanistan by May, sir.”
“Oh.”
“Well, sir, I heard you changed it, sir?”
“Oh.”
“Well, sir, is it true? Did you change President Trump’s commitment, sir?”
“Mmm… Yeah. Gonna wait a while.”
“Why, sir?”
“Well, I had to.”
“Why, sir?”
“It was the right thing to do. This is good soup. You should have the cook give you a bowl.”
“Was there a reason, or did you just change it, just to change it, sir?”
“Huh?”
“Well, you know, like you changed the perfectly successful border policy just for the sake of changing it, like you changed the successful Trump policy of containment of Iran just for the sake of changing it… that sort of thing, sir?”
“Come on, man! Everything we did, we did for the right reasons.”
“Okay, so why are you postponing the timeline for moving troops out of Afghanistan, sir?”
“Well, we need them there a few more months.”
“To do what?”
“Umm… uh… what they do now.”
“What’s that, sir?”
“Training the native afghans?”
“Haven’t they been doing that for 20 years, sir? What’s three or four more months?”
“Well, I’m not at liberty to say.”
“So your staff’s been deceiving you, sir?”
“Beg your pardon?”
“So your staff’s split on leaving, sir?”
“Oh, well, there’s always a number of choices people talk about.. but this is the right thing. We’ll be out of there by September 11.”
“I heard that, sir, but I didn’t believe it.”
“Huh? Why?”
“Your team wants to fly our people out of there, right at the last minute, so they can say we pulled out of there before it would’ve been twenty years, right? That’s the idea? Celebrate the anniversary, so to speak, but showing your administration wanted to make a point about peace right as the anniversary of the 9-11 attacks approached? Was that your team’s plan?”
“Well, sure, that’s part of it. Now that you mention it, I remember one of the folks saying how it would be a nice counter point for us to show our commitment to peace by tying September 11 to a date of withdrawal after 20 years of it being tied to a date of attacks.”
“And you didn’t fire that aide on the spot, sir?”
“Come on, Man!”
“Look, I see what you’re going for. You’re a bunch of American liberals. That’s how American liberals think. I get it. But did any of you think about how the enemy thinks?”
“Huh?”
“Did any of you think about the way that our enemy in Afghanistan… heck, our enemy throughout the middle east… thinks about holidays and anniversaries?”
“Huh?”
“Look, you know how Americans like to associate famous dates with happy celebrations – parades, picnics, parties, fireworks celebrations, days off from work, sir?”
“Well, sure.”
“Well, our enemies – the communists and the islamofascists – especially the islamofascists – like to associate famous dates with mass murder. If they bombed somebody on a certain date, they commemorate it with another bombing. If they burned a place down on a certain date, they celebrate the anniversary by burning down some other place. It’s just how they are, sir. It’s how they’ve always been.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Several of the important defeats in muslim history, purely coincidentally, happened on September 11. ”
“Huh?”
“In 1565, the Knights Hospitaller drove the Ottomans out of Malta on September 11.”
“Oh?”
“In 1683, the Holy League defeated the Ottomans at the Battle of Vienna on September 11.”
“Oh?”
“In 1697, the Holy League defeated the Ottomans at the Battle of Zenta on September 11.”
“Oh?”
“Look, I’m not any kind of an expert on this stuff, sir…”
“Coulda fooled me…”
“I’m just a pizza guy. I don’t know any more of this than anybody else. But what I do know is, these islamofascist terrorists…”
“Why do you call them that?”
“Well, sir, that’s what everybody calls them except your crowd. For at least 20 years now. The rest of us refuse to bury our heads in the sand.”
“Oh.”
“So anyway, these islamofascists put a great deal of store in the concept of re-conquering things. They believe that if a land has EVER been muslim, then it will ALWAYS be muslim. So they think it’s their job to win countries back that they’ve lost.”
“Oh.”
“And they seem to have the same idea about historical dates. It’s like a superstition for them, I guess. The September 11 attacks – in addition to being everything else they were, a horrible attack on the west, a horrible mass murder of 3000 innocent strangers – those attacks were also a sort of a plan to ‘take back’ that particular date. To make up for past losses by establishing a win for their death cult on that same day.”
“Oh.”
“In their view, they’ve succeeded. So now they celebrate; they party on September 11, as they remember how many innocent westerners they murdered that day… as they remember how much horrible destruction they wreaked on that day, almost twenty years ago now, sir.”
“Well, but that’s that, then, right? Why should we worry about it now? They’ve won the day, in your theory. They’ve won it back, so now it’s theirs. Sick as it is, it’s done. They have the cup, so to speak. So it’s not an issue anymore.”
“Are you not listening at all, sir?”
“Huh?”
“You’re not getting it. They now think of September 11 as a particularly great day to keep on acting out. They think the best way to honor that day is to celebrate by attacking more people, killing more innocents, on September 11, every year, sir, if they can. Every time they get an opportunity, sir!”
“Oh, you’re just imagining things now, son…”
“Remember Benghazi?”
“Come on, man!”
“Benghazi, Libya. September 11, 2012. They stormed our embassy’s southern Libya outpost and killed our ambassador and three aides.”
“That was a coincidence… A spontaneous demonstration that just…”
“Oh, save it for the networks, sir. I’m not stupid.”
“Oh. Yeah.”
“Look, here’s the point. I’m not a military strategist. I’m no expert. I don’t know if we should stay there for another 50 years or if we should leave tomorrow. But I know this much: If you keep our troops there until right before September 11, and then have a big visible departure right before or around September 11, then that will be an absolutely irresistible cue for the terrorists.”
“You think?”
“I KNOW. Hell, everybody knows, sir.”
“Really?”
“These people point machine guns in the air and fire thousands of live rounds into the sky in celebration at WEDDINGS, sir! That’s just how they are! Look, you do NOT want to give these people any reason to feel like they’re celebrating a fresh victory on September 11.”
“You sure?”
“Can’t you just picture it? They’ll all cheer that they won… they DO think they’ve won, heck, it’s awfully hard to argue that they haven’t… they’ll celebrate their victory in driving out the Americans by a rampant attack on innocent people all over the country. It’s just how they are… that’s going to happen no matter what… but at least we can avoid giving them an opportunity to make it even bigger than it has to be, sir.”
“I dunno, man. My advisors…”
“Your advisors are smoking opium, sir. They’re typical liberals, thinking that everyone on earth thinks like them. They Don’t, sir. There are a lot of worldviews that are a lot more violent, more vengeful, more evil, than anything your team wants to admit to exist, sir.”
“Well, I guess we’ll see.”
“What? What do you mean?”
“Well, we’ll see. When we fly our troops out in September, you’ll find out if you were right or wrong. I wouldn’t worry.”
“How can you not worry?”
“Oh, there isn’t a chance on earth that I’ll remember this conversation when we pull out in September.”
“Look, sir, I’ve got to get back on my route, but please… I just feel like, well, like I’ve been somehow meant to have your ear for these few minutes, like it was fate somehow, and I’d hate to think it was a waste, sir. Please think about what what we’ve been talking about, sir. Please think hard.”
“Hey, you know what I think would really be interesting?”
“What, sir?”
“If there’s any more soup. You think there’s any more soup? This was surprisingly good soup. Now, what was it called again?”
Copyright 2021 John F Di Leo
Excerpted with permission from “Evening Soup with Basement Joe, Volume One,” from Free State West Publishing, available in paperback or eBook exclusively on Amazon.
John F. Di Leo is a Chicagoland-based international transportation and trade compliance professional and consultant. A onetime Milwaukee County Republican Party chairman, he has been writing a regular column for Illinois Review since 2009. His book on vote fraud (The Tales of Little Pavel) and his political satires on the current administration (Evening Soup with Basement Joe, Volumes I, II, and III), are available in either eBook or paperback, only on Amazon.
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